Themes

At first: 
We are living in a world 
of increasing complexity. 
None of us can say, how complexity increases or how we can foresee or predict. But we all know, it is necessary, to develop new kinds of thinking and acting, which are able to keep us efficient in business in worldwide competition. 
We all know, other cultures are more efficient in co-working than we are, and we have to learn, how they are. 
So we have to develop and to practise new kinds of thinking and acting, which enable and base on new values ... and enable new basic values. 
But nothing is new, for every kind of thinking and thoughts we can find an example in the past. 
The difference is, we couldn't understand it before. 
Now we are able to understand, because former thinking meets today living. 

For instance 
KANT'S Maxim
(also called "categorical imperative", but I don't like "imperatives", I like maxims, because I can set them as an ideal to myself): 
Whatever you do, it should be the basis of that, what you would set as generally guilty for yourself even as for others (popular translated). 
Means: Everybody (is able to think an to act) thinks and acts on the same basis of wellknown egoism, which knows, everybody else has the same rights as I have, with my acting I give the right to everybody else, to do as I have done. 
Popular formulation: What you want the others do to you, is the most simple value to decide your own actions. 
The new chance is the output (result) of a new necessity: If it is correct (for you), that morality and the influence of moral institutions is decreasing, the necessarity of choosing your values is increasing. 
We did it always (choose some values by own decision), since every times, but in former times control was much closer to us, gave us a forced-upon orientation, people who choosed varying values often had to leave their conform social environment. 
We call it "Ethos", familiar to the ancient - greek - thinking, that each individual has to choose and build up his own value - system. So, Ethos is not anti - moral or a - moral, Ethos is the internal building of values, each individual has (automatically?) built up by own experience. 
The idea (is not absolute new, but rather consistent): Personality grows with "working up experience" to a consistenst system of simple and fitting values. 

Opportunities 
I'd been just ready with this, my friend came in and showed me a postcard. "Look at this, what I have found just by chance. That is one of those things you often told to me." I read the text and said: "That is stolen from me!", as I once, in 1990, had written a poem, which starts: 
the aim you have 
is like a star in the sky 
you never can reach it 
but it shows to you 
the direction... 
(called: The Way Is The Way...) 
And on the postcard I read: 
(re-transposed from german) 
Ideals are like stars. 
We never can reach them, 
but like sailors on the wide ocean 
we are guided by them on our course. 
Carl Schurz 
The name, I knew at once, I've heard already, long time ago (at school, history). You perhaps know this man better than me, (Backside of the postcard: Companion of Lincoln, 1829-1906), but now I'm sure, he didn't read my poem an dhe didn't hear my thoughts over ideals as the basis of value-system, my comparison of aims and ideals, he never was a member of one of my seminars. 
So, you can see: 
"But nothing is new, for every kind of thinking and thoughts we can find an example in the past,..." 
Quod erat demonstrandum, what was to demonstrate (?) 
 

(Is to be continued ...) 
 
 
 
 

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©1990-2007 Rolf Reinhold 
Last updated at 07 Nov 2007